Hurricane
by riddleberry
Summary: There's a man called the Doctor. He lives on a cloud in the sky, and all he does, all day, every day is to stop all the children in the world ever having bad dreams. But he can't seem to save Clara from the crippling company of her nightmares, and it absolutely eats him alive.


She drifts asleep at the eleventh hour, locked within the protective grasp of the Doctor, who has been out like a light for quite some time.

Sinking, gliding, tumbling into the stronghold of a ruthless nightmare she knows all too well, she tries to brace herself for the collision. But she fails to move. Nothing's working right. Her limbs lock, frozen by her sides, and her cries for help are lodged tightly in her throat with no release.

The Doctor sleeps on as the devilish dream seizes her by the throat and whisks her away into the clutches of what she swiftly recognizes as a Dalek, speckled with an unnerving combination of snow flurries and human blood. Red and white wash over her. She feels suffocated.

The Dalek screams her name and spits furious demands at her, but the overwhelming presence of death has pierced her eardrums and sent shards of vile stench coursing through her sinuses, rendering it unbearable to breathe.

She cannot hear. She cannot think.

A small part of her is aware that it is all merely an illusion of sleep, but the larger part is too far gone to be salvaged.

She sinks further into the jaws of the nightmare and is met with the same scene as before. Only this time, she's the Dalek, and she can just barely make out the shape of a human through her blood spattered eyestalk.

She's screaming now. Blood curdling howls of rage and misery and loneliness burst through her lungs and penetrate the air like darts.

She can't tell what she's saying. She doesn't recognize her body or her voice.

She feels like a stranger to herself when she utters the signature cry of the Daleks and extinguishes the life of the trembling figure before her in a flash of blood and horror. The worst part is, she feels no remorse. Empowerment replaces empathy, and empathy is torn to shreds.

She is a Dalek.

_I am a Dalek._

Gasping for air, she awakens. A fine layer of sweat coats her entire body. She's trembling, her flushed cheeks soaked with tears. She doesn't notice how loudly she's crying until the Doctor pulls her head to his chest, running his fingers through her tangled hair.

He's been awake for twenty minutes, listening to her anguished screams.

This happens every single night, but he can't grow used to it. His Clara, writhing in impenetrable agony facing some sort of terror he can't combat. He's left unable to do anything but care for her as she suffers and pray to the lonely gods that each horror ends sooner than the last.

And then there's the worst part of it all.

He has no idea what she is dreaming about. Her shrieks are never interpretable, and she's too horrified and too weakened after each episode to utter anything but a feeble "Doctor, I'm scared."

_I know. I'm scared too, love._

Frankly, he's terrified.

By now, she's stopped wailing, and her damp head is flush against his bare chest. She's still whimpering softly, but he knows she'll fall back to sleep soon. He keeps his chest bare to allow her closer access to his heartbeats. He knows it's the only rhythm in all the universe likely to ease her panic and permit her mind to rest.

He would lie naked in a snowstorm if it meant she could sleep.

After several minutes of painful, labored breathing, Clara drifts off into a second bout of rest.

The Doctor closes his eyes and focuses on her breathing patterns. He knows he can't go back to sleep. Not now. Her bad dreams never stop. They haunt her each time she closes her eyes.

Then morning arrives, and she's good as new. She waltzes around the universe with a perky little smile plastered on her face like she hasn't just woken up five or six times in the night, fearing for her life. It makes him so sick. He never confronts her about the nightmares in the daytime. He wonders if he should, but he _can't_. He loves that damn cheer of hers too much to watch it fizzle out at the mention of the night terrors. He lets her live her days in numbing bliss and her nights in irrevocable pain. And he doesn't know how to stop.

And then the darkness falls again, and her nightmare seizes her from remission.

_I am not a Dalek. I am not a Dalek._


End file.
